Taking Responsibility for Achieving Your Goals

When was the last time you were completely honest with yourself? When have you looked at your goals and acknowledged the real reason why you have or haven’t achieved them?

Sometimes we find it difficult to look at our own lives with clarity. We see other people – we can tell them what is holding them back – but we can’t be that straightforward with ourselves. We like to pretend something else is going on. But we can’t move forward, in both our business and our lives, if we aren’t being completely honest with ourselves.

First, take a look at your business, as if you are the CEO, and ask yourself: what are the reasons why things have or haven’t worked? Instinctively, you may jump to external reasons, blaming time, other people, a certain course you invested in. Try to think internally. Try to take personal responsibility. Why haven’t you made it happen?

Perhaps you weren’t successful on that course because you didn’t believe in yourself, because you were comparing yourself to others and lost your confidence, so you stopped showing up.

Perhaps your branding didn’t turn out as planned, not because it’s the other person’s fault for not doing a good job, but because you didn’t communicate to them what you really wanted.

Or maybe, you’ve simply not stepped up to do what you needed to do. You haven’t given it your all. My blog about how to stick to your commitments could help with this – How to stick to your commitments. 

It’s not easy trying to break down your outer shell, but it is important to build the self-awareness needed to move your business forward. This means adapting that growth mindset and not wallowing in your mistakes but asking yourself why they happened and making real changes. See it as a learning experience. 

It is only when this occurs that we begin to develop trust in ourselves and resilience. It is only when this occurs that we know what we need to do to stay on track and we can love ourselves, despite all our flaws.

Try this Exercise

If you’re struggling to open up to yourself, start building it into your everyday routine. The more you practice taking responsibility for yourself, the easier it’ll become.

Ask yourself the following questions every month:

• What have I done successfully, and what did I do to enable this?
• What hasn’t worked out, and what have I done or haven’t done to make this happen?
• What have I learned from that, and what am I going to do differently as a result?

It is all about taking radical responsibility, of working on yourself to achieve your goals, rather than blaming external sources. It is only when you make commitments to yourself that you can start to move forward, so make them, honour them and, most importantly, learn from them. 

For more tips please join my free Coaching Facebook community – The Coaching Collective.